April 23, 2009

A local file a day, keeps support away.

We have all heard the expression "A apple a day keeps the doctor away", well a new feature in Revit Architecture 2010 helps you keep support away, if you use it every day.

This enhancement is pretty easy to miss.

When opening a Central file Revit now has a check box called "Create New Local". This check box is checked by default anytime to attempt to open a Central file. This check box only and feature is only available if you click on Central file after going to the Application menu to open a file and will not appear if you open a central file from the recent files page.

This check box creates a new file on the users machine with the name of the file followed by the user name that is currently set in Options for your computer. For example, in this case I am clicking on a central file with the name "Interior-Central.rvt", with this check box selected, Revit will create a new local file (and open that file) called "Interior-Central_brummh.rvt" (brummh is my user name). It creates this file in the users file directory (that you can set in Options under the File locations tab).

If Revit runs into a case where a file with that name already exists, Revit will present you two two options in this dialog box:

I would always recommend that you choose the second option for appending the existing file (the old file) with a time stamp. If you do this, then you will be creating backup copies of your local file in case you need to go back to an older version of your file.

This new feature lets you avoid some common problems that can occur if you open a central file directly or forget to create a new local file.

Creating a new local file everyday is a great way to prevent problems with work-sharing. This basically makes sure that you are always working on the latest, greatest, version of the central file, and can eliminate problems with permissions that might occur if you are working in the same local file every day (eventually, the local and central files get out of sync, and you have problems reloading latest, or saving to central). So, each morning when you come into the office and start your day in Revit on your work-shared project, create a new local file from your central file. This will save you time and effort down the road and prevents a lot of problems. There are some scripts out there that can do this for you (see these post on Do U Revit for a good script), but Revit 2010 projects all have this check box feature when you go to open a Central file.

Very few of my users ever use the Open open option in any program, they all prefer to double click a file in explorer. I liked this feature when I saw it but if I'm understanding this post, it is only an option when using the Open dialog?

Agreed...most users don't open the app and then open a file. They just open the file from Explorer or a shortcut on their desktop.

It amazes me that these hijinks are even necessary, though, and I keep wondering when Autodesk will bite the bullet and adopt a real database backend. A complicated problem, to be sure, but at least it will scale, unlike the current system.

The automatic local file creator in 2010 is great! Unless you need to use multiple versions of Revit across multiple projects (as most MEP users will in order to conform with client needs). That's why I built a little app to help with the process of creating local files. Its free and built in vb.net and you can download it from our user group website here: http://www.ramlug.org/?p=176.